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When it comes to the user experience on a website most designers tend to think that they have to sacrifice creativity in order to simplify the websites for users. Wired‘s Robert Hoekman Jr. says that simplicity is overrated and that the definition if the term “simple” may not be clear to many.

”’Clean,’ for example, can be measured in degrees. It can mean very different things to people depending on their standards of cleanliness,” said Hoekman Jr.

“Then there’s a word like ‘simple.’ Two people can have very different definitions of a word like that. Designers, in particular, most definitely do.”

Hoekman Jr. believes that designers see the term simple in a much different light than everyone else. Of course almost every word in the dictionary and every definition is still up to interpretation by anyone. When designers are hired most of their clients want to provide users with a positive user experience on their site no matter what it is.

“When many of them say ‘simple,’ they mean to describe something incredibly easy to use. When others say it, they’re referencing the relative complexity of a thing, whether it’s a problem, a solution, a piece of code, or something else,” according to Hoekman Jr.

“To this extent, I admit that what I’m proposing here may be a semantic debate. But it’s an important one, because the word ‘simple’ also gets used in the presence of stakeholders and coworkers who may have no idea what simplicity means in the context of a user’s experience.”

He continued to stress the fact that simple might be thrown around a little too often and a bit too casual as well. Hoekman Jr. believes that clarity is the real term that everyone should strive for. He said that there are many good design practices that can make complicated aspects appear simple but the ultimate goal is creating clarity in design.